Republican Lawmaker Introduces Net Neutrality Legislation (variety.com) 350
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced net neutrality legislation on Tuesday that prohibits internet providers from blocking and throttling content, but does not address whether ISPs can create so-called "fast lanes" of traffic for sites willing to pay for it. The legislation also would require that ISPs disclose their terms of service, and ensure that federal law preempts any state efforts to establish rules of the road for internet traffic. "A lot of our innovators are saying, 'Let's go with things we have agreement on, and other things can be addressed later,'" Blackburn told Variety. She said that she was "very hopeful" about the prospects for the legislation because "an open internet and preserving that open internet is what people want to see happen. Let's preserve it. Let's nail it down. Let's stop the ping-ponging from one FCC commission to another. This is something where the Congress should act." Blackburn chairs a House subcommittee on communications and technology.
It will get changed (Score:5, Insightful)
They will keep the preemption rules and gut the rest making it so there is no NN
Solving governemnt overeach with more rules. (Score:3)
The biggest issues that the GOP had with Net Neutrality is it goes against their idea of having government control over business.
However we are starting to see what I expected to see. 1 simple to follow rule being overturned being replaced with many complicated rules.
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Re:It will get changed (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm missing the distinction between throttling and fast-lanes?
Will there be a guaranteed minimum bandwidth? If not, then anyone not in the fast-lanes is effectively being throttled.
Re: Keep the bad parts (Score:2)
Spoken like a person who gave up hope that her government can do the right thing.
It's easier just to say "student of history."
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Re:Keep the bad parts (Score:4, Informative)
You would think so, but reality is often far more convoluted than theory. Theories are nice and clean until you start building in exceptions. This is no different that a program. You code based on a simple function, but as you add features, exceptions, business logic, and error handling; your code becomes this monstrosity where you begin to wonder what the original intent was in the first place.
Net Neutrality is in the same way not as clear cut as you might think. That's not to say that I am not in favor of Net Neutrality. I am. Yet there are some things that clearly benefit from lower latency such as voice communications or video to video conversations or even remotely controlling devices from afar. Even electronic gaming and our own stock market would pay for a lower level ping if given the opportunity.
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Stock brokers (HFT machine, to be honest and exact) pay REAL MONEY to be closer and closer to the exchange data centers, where milliseconds mean money. They reroute fiber to save feet of transit. They don't play on the same Internet we do. And brokers out there in the wild will buy the best, absolutely.
If the ISPs want to make money, they ought to be selling 'business-class' (HA!) connections to the few who would pay for them, with lowered latency and all, though I'm getting 15ms on the 5GHz WiFi band thro
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But, is HFT a game that's even worth playing - for society at large?
Is there anything (significant) about HFT that doesn't just concentrate wealth into fewer hands?
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NO, but it's the game.
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But the goal isn't to agitate for changes. It is to make changes.
deluded anarchist (Score:3)
We get it, you're an anarchist who doesn't believe in market failures. That others are resistant to your lies is unsurprising.
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The NN regulations were extremely light handed, they expressly permitted QOS and packet inspection and threw in a huge waiver and about network maintenance. What the regulations did was give the government a way to intervene of an ISP or backbone provider was discriminating on package based on the service they provide. For example, providing not interference with video streaming when it originates with the ISP's own service and slowing down and deprioritizing video packets from other providers.
These regulat
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No, because you've got it backwards. Netflix isn't "pushing" anything - neither is slashdot. The customers of Netflix are pulling content, and those customers are also ALREADY PAYING their providers for bandwidth. Those providers shouldn't be able to charge Netflix for the bandwidth the provider's customers are already paying for.
I think the root of this thread has it wrong, though. If a provider is providing the speeds it claims, then Netflix should have no problems playing. Outside of that, if the pr
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So? Given his honesty record I'd believe him telling me he's having a heart attack after three independent coroners come to the same conclusion at the autopsy.
The right way (Score:4, Insightful)
Passing a law is the right way to do it. This way we'll have a stable requirement and not some 'regulation' that can be changed at the whim of any given administration. We don't need ISP to be regulated as utilities, we simply need the right neutrality laws. If this happens, we'll all be in a better place.
Re:The right way (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need ISP to be regulated as utilities
I disagree. The internet is a critical part of the backbone of our consumption-based economy. If there are not safe guards in place for the internet as a public utility to protect the market then we are at risk of damaging the entire economic market (possibly causing yet another recession) in order to provide special treatment to a small amount of participants namely Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner.
This IS a public concern over the general welfare for all people and all businesses the same as clean drinking water and electricity is. It must be protected to provide for the general welfare of everyone not just a few special interests.
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Some people disagree on this. Usually people with a lot of money.
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clean drinking water
Some people disagree on this. Usually people with a lot of money.
A lot of countries have a right to a lot stuff - food, water, a job etc in theory but in practice they get nothing. E.g. the USSR, North Korea etc.
Meanwhile there are lot of countries which have few rights to those things but in practice people tend not to die of of thirst of famine.
Basically countries which only grant negative rights (freedom from X) tend to outperform ones that grant extensive positive rights (right to X) for for negative and positive rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: The right way (Score:3)
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The internet is a critical part of the backbone of our consumption-based economy.
Wait. So your argument for NN is that people must have guaranteed snappy access to the site of their choice so we make sure they don't lose the ability to... buy stuff online at a frenzied pace?
Wow. Power to the people, d00d.
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Re:The right way (Score:5, Insightful)
The cable carrying information into your house should be regulated as a utility. This covers cable TV, phone service, Internet service. It should be regulated not because of the Internet or TV channels or phone services. It should be regulated because the lines for these services have to pass through public easements [wikipedia.org], and it's in The Public's best interest to have as few physical lines as possible on telephone poles, in underground easements, and leading up to their home. The optimal solution to this problem is a single line leading to each home which carries all these services.
As such the contract to install and maintain this line should be awarded to a single company, which due to its monopolistic nature should be regulated as a utility and prohibited from providing service over the line. Companies wishing to provide service, be it Internet, TV channels, phone service, alarm monitoring, or whatever future information transmission application (holovision, smellovision, whatever), should all be allowed to transmit that information over that line for a fixed, regulated fee, but the company maintaining the line is prohibited from providing any of these services so there is no conflict of interest. This is how we do electric, gas, and long distance phone service. One company maintains all the lines and pipes in an area, but you can buy your electricity, gas, and long distance phone service from hundreds if not thousands of different suppliers.
The fact that (1) there will be a monopoly contract to maintain the line to each home, and (2) that line will pass through public easements is enough to justify regulating it as a utility.
Change (Score:2)
If there are not safe guards in place for the internet as a public utility to protect the market then we are at risk of damaging the entire economic market (possibly causing yet another recession) in order to provide special treatment to a small amount of participants namely Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner.
The problem is that traditional utilities are pretty much stable. Water distributions systems haven't changed significantly in 80 years. Ditto the electrical system. The internet changes rapidly. Delivery systems change. Services change. Protocols change. The only thing that is significantly similar is TCP/IP, BGP and DNS.
So how do you regulate that without killing off any potential improvements that run afoul of said regulation?
You leave it alone until something is obviously broken, then you pass a law to
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This IS a public concern over the general welfare for all people and all businesses the same as clean drinking water and electricity is. It must be protected to provide for the general welfare of everyone not just a few special interests.
The only part of the internet that should be regulated as a utility is the "last mile" or "the pole to your home." Anything else is generally overkill, and the market can handle the rest if competition is healthy. Ask yourself this, if tomorrow comcast, AT&T, and so on could no longer hold local monopolies because the "pole to home" is classed as a utility and you can get access from *any* ISP, how much do you think things would change as companies tried to position themselves better?
Right, you can al
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Apparently the failure mode of libertarianism is government action. Comcast paid for that last mile, and you're just going to socialize it? Chalk up another episode of lying hypocrisy from Mashiki.
You mean Comcast paid for it with either/and/or full monopoly rights, zero taxes, heavy government investment(state/local/city) in many cases. In other words, in most cases it's via your tax dollars not their dollars and on top of that they fight tooth and nail against any form of competition, including filing lawsuits against startups trying to gain "right-of-way" access on the same poles.
Chalk up another episode of the AC comment stalker, that show's they're as deranged two days ago as they are today.
Re:The right way (Score:4, Insightful)
ISPs are the new interstate highway system. I don't think the progress in commerce since Eisenhower was attributable to the toll roads that are a part of our highway system, it was the free access high speed long distance arteries.
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The internet is a critical part of the backbone of our consumption-based economy.
This can change. That change starts with our leaders - declaring with action if not words - that affordable broadband access is not a human right, nor necessary. Objectively, it's arguable. Sometimes I take an online class, but facilities are available for doing that without broadband, and schools can adjust their instructional material to compensate for ever narrower bandwidth. As for everything else, chatting, reading, online shopping, bills, you don't really need much speed for that. While I sympathize,
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And now it's regulated by Comcast.
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Wrong. When nearly all banking and bill paying is now done online (which the creditors push hard for), when corporations use the Internet for their communications for everything , it becomes a critical element to living. People can't live without money to buy to gas, electricity and food.
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So you're OK with paying for Internet by the Kb, like you pay by the kWh for electric?
Works for me. This was the norm in most places until recently
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The only thing that can solve this problem is ensuring that the people in congress are not horrible. That's it. That's the only thing.
Unfortunately, I think you've replaced a difficult problem with an impossible one. It's probably easier to fix NN now and pass another bill later than it is to fix congress. Among other things:
- Congress starts with a very small pool of self-selected applicants, so you're picking from at best a dozen volunteers.
- Applicants who want any chance of winning have to be affiliated with things that bring them money or visibility, so they're already aligned with some kind of big money.
- It's a mostly two-party sys
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The only thing that can solve this problem is ensuring that the people in congress are not horrible.
That is by far the weakest argument that makes assumptions that are provably false. I've proposed (many times on /.) a much better fix, by removing the previous government regulations that caused this in the first place, namely franchise agreements.
If Local municipalities treated last mile like infrastructure and allowed any number of service providers access to the last mile customer, it would solve this problem (and other problems we don't even know we have) without having to control the idiots in both th
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"We don't need ISP to be regulated as utilities"
Unless there is a fair competitive marketplace you do need regulation. Currently, you can't start a business and run fiber to peoples homes. The only competition is satellite, which most don't find acceptable due to latency, and 4G, which doesn't cut it. More than 50 million homes have only a single broadband provider available. So these are local monopolies w/o competition. They are virtual utilities and need to be regulated as such.
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Unless there is a fair competitive marketplace you do need regulation.
You are correct, 100%.
But my question is, why is the natural choice regulation and not making the marketplace fair and competitive?
Keep in mind government regulation caused this problem in the first place, and you're betting the solution is more of the same thinking that caused this .
https://alliswel.us/image/1722... [alliswel.us]
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I'd be fine with making them fair and competitive if you can find a way for them to not need to all run wires through my front lawn. It already gets painted every time someone down the street needs work or digs a hole...gas, water, cable and phone companies, seems like my lawn is every color but green.
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Being how the internet has embedded itself as a critical infrastructure for our personal lives and our economy. It is important that ISP are properly regulated so they realize the importance they carry.
Imagine a Power Utility cutting power or browning out a Solar Cell manufacture, or a community who is against how they generate power. That is why Utilities have a lot of regulation. Because they are vital to the community, and we can't allow such companies to just do anything they want like other businesse
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Getting the regulations out of the hands of the Executive Branch's appointees and into the muck of the Legislature and Supreme Court will go a long way to stabilizing the playing field.
The internet has been "a big deal" for 20 years, I think we should be able to craft some sensible legislation about it by now.
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Passing a law is the right way to do it. This way we'll have a stable requirement and not some 'regulation' that can be changed at the whim of any given administration. We don't need ISP to be regulated as utilities, we simply need the right neutrality laws. If this happens, we'll all be in a better place.
Regulations can't be "changed at [a] whim". There's a well-defined process that an agency must follow before changing existing regulations (this has been in the news a few times this year, when agencies tried reversing policies from the previous administration without following the process defined by Congress).
It's not even a completely unreasonable argument to say that it's easier for Congress to repeal a law than it is for an executive agency to change a regulation.
It'll never pass. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's go with things we have agreement on, and other things can be addressed later is too rational, and Democrats will block it because it was introduced by a Republican.
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Let's go with things we have agreement on, and other things can be addressed later is too rational, and Democrats will block it because it was introduced by a Republican.
Negative. The problem here is that when two sides of a negotiating table have such radically different points of view, the set of things that are mutually agreed upon can be very small if anything at all. Drafting up an agreement based on those points alone can have disastrous ripple effects. In this case, the stakes are very high because the outcome of this issue will affect every American citizen and that is something that is not to be taken lightly. The problem, as is typical in many negotiating situ
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No, the democrats will block it because it's a carefully tailored smokescreen. Look who is introducing this bill and her history in regards to the internet and ISPs.
It supposedly outlaws throttling and blocking, but allows for "fast lanes". That isn't net neutrality.
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How does preventing ISPs from blocking and throttling content benefit only Republicans and not Democrats? Doesn't make sense.
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It doesn't prevent blocking or throttling anything. As long as "fast lanes" are allowed, nothing stops the ISP's from making the non-fast lane effectively blocked or however throttled they want. The bill plays word-games to appease gullible idiots.
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How does preventing ISPs from blocking and throttling content benefit only Republicans and not Democrats? Doesn't make sense.
It doesn't, but Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon's lobbyists have been contributing to all of the Rs. And for what it's worth, I've been a lifelong R, who finds the whole lobbying thing revolting.
Our ISP's best buddy (Score:5, Informative)
The process was, the FCC (led by former Verizon corporate lawyer Ajit Pai) throws away the Net Neutrality - causing fear and some panic. Marsha and the other lobbied Republican members of congress ride to the rescue with new "Net Neutrality" legislation - which is anything but. And gets us maybe a little ways back towards Net Neutrality, but outlaws states doing their own Net Neutrality etc. (biggest threats to this huge new profit center for Comcast), they declare victory and we're screwed.
This needs to be blocked and let the FCC's recent changes get slapped down in court.
Re: Our ISP's best buddy (Score:3)
Why would the FCC rollback of FCC regulations be 'slapped down' in court?
The Net Neutrality regulations implemented less than 2 years ago were done outside of the legislative branch, the regulations did not originate in Congress and were not signed into law by the President.
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That's how government works.
Also, you cannot unilaterally undue rules. There would ne
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Also, you cannot unilaterally undue rules. There would need to be justification for the change. As yet, the FCC has yet to present evidence for the change.
You absolutely can unilaterally undue rules and regulations. You absolutely cannot undue laws. You understand so little how governments are actually supposed to function is scary. The entire point you're trying to present is fiat by executive order AKA how a dictatorship/junta/non-democracy works.
Fake Net Neutrality according to dslreports (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Tennessee-Rep-Marsha-Blackburn-Unveils-Fake-Net-Neutrality-Law-140921 [dslreports.com]
Throttling vs Fast Lanes? (Score:3)
Someone please define what they are thinking. How can you not throttle and yet have fast lanes?
I'm thinking this is just double speak and is sponsored by the broadband companies in order to block state legislation.
I'm not against certain efforts to add priority levels to internet traffic like specifically for playing games but it would have to be paid by customers to the ISP's.
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De facto ban on "fast lanes" if you can read (Score:2)
prohibits internet providers from blocking and throttling content, but does not address whether ISPs can create so-called "fast lanes" of traffic for sites willing to pay for it.
If you can't throttle, how do you give priority to the fast lane? It's addressed.
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That depends on if you see a qualitative difference between slowing down traffic from a specific source, like Netflix servers or giving priority (which is only ever "faster" over saturated links) to specific sources to the slight detriment of all other non-prioritized traffic.
One of those will always be to the measurable detriment of the target, the other has no target and should have minimal detriment to any particular entity.
And if it gets to the point where the network is always saturated (I.E. everythin
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to the slight detriment of all other non-prioritized traffic.
Even a slight detriment is still a throttle. There is no slippery slope - it's all or nothing. If even one thing is reduced in speed a tiny amount to make way for a paid priority, then you are throttling.
Don't trust her... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't trust Blackburn. It's already leaking out that Comcast's lawyers are the ones writing this legislation. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvw8k5/comcast-fcc-net-neutrality-law
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Yah, this is the author of the "Internet 'Freedom' Act" (quoting intentional) and opponent of municipal broadband. She has stood against attempts to enforce any level of privacy requirements on ISP's. She is the Ajit Pai of the Senate. Speaking of which.... Fuck Ajit Pai. And fuck Marsha Blackburn too.
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She is the Ajit Pai of the House.
FTFY. Only reason she even gets elected is because the R by her name plays well to her extremely gerrymandered district that contains the rich suburbs of Nashville and a vast swath of farmland that extends westward across a third of the state.
Doh! Thanks... My dystopian reality filter is interfering with basic civics knowledge...
Oh, GOP... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republican party is in a bad place. After a disastrous year, they are desperate for a win... any win. It's why they are pushing so strongly for the tax bill, even though many of them recognize how terribly flawed it is - not only from an social and economic perspective, but also from a political one: the tax plan will cost them votes. But, they fear, not having passed any significant legislation will cost them more. So we get the this tax plan.
And yet, here we have a perfect opportunity for them to pass some major legislation that would not only be incredibly popular (some 70% of the country support Net Neutrality) but would be fairly easy to get through Congress. It has support on both sides of the aisle. It wouldn't even require much work: just enshrine the already-written pre-Ajit Pai rules as law. It is quite possible that they could have gotten this law passed in mere days.
The Republican party would have been seen as working for the people, standing up against huge telecoms, and able to work and lead the country as a whole rather than satisfying a small base. It would have been a home-run, a Christmas Miracle. It would have been that desperately needed success the GOP has been selling its soul for.
And then they go and do this.
Oh, GOP.
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It doesn't matter what they do. People like you will see any bill by the Rs as a sell out to ISPs no matter what is in the bill. And even if they did somehow make a bill that totally destroyed the ISPs, you'd write it off as self serving and an obvious attempt to buy votes. (I've seen that on here already for stuff that Trump has pushed forward that we agreed with. Post after post saying not to trust it. Or that it must benefit him in some way we can't see. )
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Would it have been self-serving? Yes, in the sense that politicians need to win the favor of voters. Would I have been thrilled it was a Republican bill? No, because the GOP would use this victory as proof they had the mandate of the people and probably wou
Jesus H Christ (Score:2)
They'll end up introducing the same regulations Obama put in with a different name. Go GOP.
"Fast lanes" == throttling (Score:2)
Moreover, how would a "fast lane" be defined? If the "fast lane" is defined by the kind of traffic, then the ISP would have to inspect its customers' packets in order to determine the application-level exchange that they are part of, and this again would violate net neutrality (and the customers' privacy, but we already know that that battle is lost). And more importantly, such inspectio
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In order to implement "fast lanes", an ISP must throttle non-"fast lane" packets, which is a negation of net neutrality.
Comcast sells you 20Mbit, 50Mbit, or a 200Mbit connection. Then they have that Boost thing, so you start downloading a file and grab the first 100MB at like 500Mbit/s.
I imagine it'd be like that: you never get less than your baseline service, and they can't throttle a particular service (netflix, google, etc.) below your baseline service. 200Mbit means you get 200Mbit to Google, to Netflix, to Spotify, to everything; getting more doesn't violate your contract.
Of course, I imagine things being done i
She's just trying to keep her job (Score:3)
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The last time Tenn voted more than 50% for a D president was in 76 when Gerald Ford was hated for pardoning Nixon.
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"That's irrelevant."
If you believe that, then you're uninformed or a flat out moron.
"When average Americans start to realize how disgustingly expensive this new tax plan is going to be for them,..."
We'll all see how things pan out over the next year as this tax plan is implemented. Vote with your wallet.
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"That's irrelevant."
If you believe that, then you're uninformed or a flat out moron.
You have not made an argument for the record of how Tennessee voters vote for the president as being somehow significant to the upcoming midterm election. Calling me names does not help your case.
"When average Americans start to realize how disgustingly expensive this new tax plan is going to be for them,..."
We'll all see how things pan out over the next year as this tax plan is implemented. Vote with your wallet.
Many Americans will find they actually take home less once they have paid their taxes under this plan. Pay more, get less - not usually a popular platform. This is likely why the GOP waited so long to introduce their terrible tax bill, so that the worst parts won't kick in until after the 2018 midterms are ove
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fast lanes exist and always have (Score:3)
Even with the fcc rules fast lanes existed.
Google paid for fiber directly into the larger isps backbones. The bought dark fiber than pay to have it terminated at the isps major and some not so major pops.
Netflix paid to have cache boxes installed and fiber directly to comcast.
Many of the acceleration and distribution networks pay for cache boxes and have direct fiber connections to all the large pops of even the midsize isp networks.
The FCC ruling did not change that at all.
The only regs needed on this (Score:4, Interesting)
1 whenever there is not a signed SLA in effect and as a minimum an ISP must provide not less than 75% of advertised speed/bandwidth 90% of the time or better (so if you advertise up to 20MPS speed 90% of the time all of your users should have not less than 15MPS available all the way to the next peer)
2 any bandwidth shaping or service restrictions must be part of a signed and notarized contract (copies to be on file in the local office and original STAMPED copy to be on file at the corporate office).
3 any ISP that owns directly or indirectly any content service may only promote said content as part of a "bonus"
where any future charges for said service must require an affirmative action on the part of the client to begin (any free %service% package must automatically cancel at the end of the promo period unless the client performs a clear action like checking a box on a physical bill or checking a box in an electronically presented bill)
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Ugh, they are focusing on the wrong things (Score:2)
I'd much rather see the focus be on:
- cracking down on ISPs that use anti-competitive behavior
- ensuring that advertised speeds are generally achievable
- forcing providers to be clear and up front about any blocking, throttling, etc. that they do
If somebody wants to provide fast lines or blocking or whatever, then I don't see how it's the government's place to try to force things one way or the other - those are things that some consumers actually want in certain scenarios. Those things aren't inherently go
Again (Score:3)
There is only one single thing needed in the law, proposal, act or regulation that is absolutely necessary, you can write it down, and only accept when it’s included there: Internet Service Providers are forbidden by law from discriminating types of data that goes through their services. Period.
It is this simple. Nothing open to interpretation, no double speak, no pretense.
If this is not explicitly there in the proposal, it’s bullshit. In this particular case it’s at best fluff... everything she is proposing there is already guaranteed. At worst, it could be opening an opportunity for anyone to block or reduce access to whatever they consider unlawful content, unlawful Internet traffic and “harmful devices”... it’s broad and clearly has some second intentions embedded there.
By the way, get ready people... you can bet that with the corporation friendly environment that this administration has created, SOPA will come back full force. This bullshit Open Internet Preservation Act might be the start of it.
Make it a consumer choice? (Score:2)
How about instead of allowing telecoms to make business arrangements to speed up or slow down communications, let the FCC establish minimum standards of bandwidth and latency as well as minimum standards of interconnectivity with other networks based on averages of network traffic generated by users. And regulating peering technicalities should also represent the public interest in maintaining a reliable communication network.
And then give the telecoms options to provide so called "fast lanes" or faster se
Define "fast lane" (Score:2)
Isn't that the came as co-location or even a content distribution network?
Re: Ajit's head gonna explode (Score:2, Informative)
Net neutrality should have been implemented via the legislative process in the first place. Anything of substance that is done by means of executive or regulatory action can be easily undone by a new administration.
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The difficulty is when, say, Verizon's own streaming service is zero-rated and doesn't count towards your speed or data caps, but all other services do.
Even if all third parties have "equal access" to pay for extra data or whatever, the service provider is offering competing services and is able to avoid those costs, reducing competitiveness.
=Smidge=
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But those could also easily be argued to not be "Internet" access, as it's all on Verizon's internal network - even if that service comes on the same wire. I don't think we need to worry about that just yet. I'd settle for NN just on the open Internet.
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Re:Fast lanes are okay, with a caveat... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then government also shouldn't make it artificially hard, or even impossible, for other providers to offer competing services, which is what they are doing now.
If Acme ISP is the only providers that is legally allowed to operate in your neighborhood, then government should butt in to ensure they don't abuse their government-provided artificial monopoly.
Re: Fast lanes are okay, with a caveat... (Score:4, Interesting)
Then government also shouldn't make it artificially hard, or even impossible, for other providers to offer competing services, which is what they are doing now.
Try to differentiate between local government and the federal government - it is your local government that awarded cable companies and telcos monopolies on providing service in an area to encourage them to invest in infrastructure to provide those services.
If Acme ISP is the only providers that is legally allowed to operate in your neighborhood, then government should butt in to ensure they don't abuse their government-provided artificial monopoly.
A regulation that prohibits blocking or throttling of any traffic is fine, few would object to that regulation.
Allowing Netflix to pay my isp to zero rate their traffic does nothing to speed up or slow down competitors traffic, it is purely a billing/accounting issue.
Allowing Netflix to park a caching server at my ISPs head office to provide better service to Netflix customers does nothing to speed up or slow down competitors traffic.
Depending on the implementation, allowing Netflix to pay for 'priority' service could lead to effectively throttling competitors service, but it would also throttle every other service equally as the priority service 'steals' available bandwidth from all other services.
Government interference is just a cherry (Score:2)
it's _hard_ to get set up as a last mile ISP. Google couldn't do it. The capital investment is huge but the existing providers are already in profit mode. Comcast admitted in their SEC filing that it costs them $9/mo to sell you broadband. Good luck getting a new provider in that market.Your capital investment is too high relative to your competition's ability to cut prices. You're competition can just drop their prices until you're out of business while you're
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not always a bad thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Not always a good idea ... (franchise agreements)
Re:Fast lanes are okay, with a caveat... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we go again. Trying to tell people how to run their companies, and whom they can do business with.
Absolutely no. We are supporting a level playing field for all businesses to have the same opportunities to grow and thrive not just the few people that had cash to buy politicians to create legal precedent for their special interest.
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There is no 'level playing field' for businesses without either a static, mature, saturated market, or, as is usually the case, external intervention, aka government regulation.
Pretending that somehow it's unfair for the cable or telephone company to deny access to the infrastructure needed to deliver competitive Internet service to municipal customers is missing a point made just above - it's your local government that granted monopoly access to those poles and/or conduits, and it is local government that
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If you supported a level playing field, then facebook and twitter would also get classified as monopolies/utilities
Uh, no.
Why the fuck, pray tell, would that be?
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Facebook and Twitter are susceptible to competition. Yes, they are. Watch.
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Government imposed neutrality is more neutral than what you describe. Internet is still a nearly de facto monopoly. If they can't play nice, they're going to get regulated.
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The government should butt out. That would be neutrality. What you're proposing is government interference.
Oh dear. You do realise that the phrase "net neutrality" is about the "net" not the "government" right? I mean net is literally the first word. Speaking of I'm going to put a tool booth up in front of your driveway. You think no regulation should exist and public utilities should be free to the corporate whims? Well you can pay me for leaving your property.
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What I don't get is people on Slashdot who have no memory of this. I get why consumers don't remember - it really didn't make national news back then in any understandable way. These boards have been full of people claiming that NN was never a thought in any form until 2015 - and the people claiming this seem to have lower UIDs.
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Hmmm .... just heard on the radio that "net neutrality" might hurt the porn industry. . . that could be worth some votes.
Ah, that would explain why Ted Cruz is against it.
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Federal power when it comes to rolling back net neutrality!!!
State's rights when it comes to guns, abortion and everything else!!!
- Republicans
Ok. Both points you listed are consistent with each other.
I am really curious on your thought process here. The way you phrased your first point makes me wonder if you do not understand the issue or if you are trying to deliberately use doublespeak here.
It's interesting that you think the federal government giving up power is against states rights.